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Speaking to the Guardian, he said: 'I want to open up the leadership to the party and the party to the country. In a society that is changing so fast in so many ways we cannot continue as we are, with essentially a closed structure that was formed a century ago.'

He also revealed an initial package of party reforms, which included:

Crowdsourcing - where the ten petitions with the most signatures would be used to determine what would be debated at Labour's policy making forum

Non-party members, such as Greenpeace, would be able to speak at the annual conference as 'consultees'

Trade unions would be ordered to 'open up' and connect more with its members

All parliamentary candidates and councillors would sign a code of conduct promising to be in regular touch with the public

Mr Miliband’s plan to axe shadow cabinet elections will be discussed by Labour MPs ahead of a vote at the party conference in Liverpool in September.

But Left-wing Labour MP John McDonnell said he was disappointed by Mr Miliband’s proposal.

‘You don’t demonstrate strong leadership by having a battle with your own party,’ he said. ‘I’m disappointed it was brought forward.

'It’s not just the shadow cabinet elections – I read in the papers as well that Ed is proposing that we scrap the quota for women in the Cabinet.

‘It is being spun as this sort of Clause IV moment where the leader of the party demonstrates he’s a strong leader by taking on his own party. Most people think those days should be put behind us.’

He said Labour party members would be angry at the proposal. ‘They don’t want to go back to the old days of Blair where everything was centralised and controlled – they want real democracy at every level,’ he added.

In a scathing attack on Mr Miliband, Labour MP Dai Havard described the idea as ‘flawed and wrong’ and said the leader’s recent email to MPs was ‘something of an insult’.

‘I do not see the need for this change,
it increases the power of patronage, it reduces the accountability of
the leader to Labour MPs.'

The Merthyr Tydfil MP told Mr Miliband that the axing of shadow cabinet elections was ‘the winding back of the internal democracy of the Parliamentary party’ and complained that there was ‘no debate with you and your advisers’.

Another Labour backbencher, Jeremy Corbyn, said it was ‘the wrong direction of travel’.

‘I do not see the need for this change, it increases the power of patronage, it reduces the accountability of the leader to Labour MPs,’ he said.

Last night sources close to Mr Miliband said: ‘We know there is going to be resistance.

‘But Ed firmly believes that this is the right thing to do and now is the right moment to do it.’

Some senior MPs – including his brother David – welcomed the plans. The former foreign secretary wrote on Twitter: ‘Well done to Ed for grasping nettle of shadow cabinet elections.’

Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander said it was a ‘sensible change’ and argued that the internal election process was a distraction from the ‘important task of taking the Government to account and understanding why we lost the last election’.